TruthAndDare

> "sex" in legal terms (for identity documents, etc.) is rarely necessarily tied to genitals or chromosomes, and more often is tied to a set of expectations about how the designated person will appear or behave.

When you put it that way, it really becomes unclear to me why it should be there at all. If we're not describing what type of biological creature a person is, and simply how they can be expected to behave, it seems like we might as well write down if the person is ill-tempered or meek, and if he or she likes to dance the waltz or the tango.

Will all change be for the better? Who determines what is better?

That's such a "politician's statment". Nothing of that is the contested point. The very question is whether the official system should care about genders at all or just stick to regular old sex.

> Sex is a basic biological function that is no longer relevant to ascribe anything to beyond that.

No longer? Was it previously but isn't any more? What happened to make this so?

And why would gender have any function? Can't we just disregard it?

Can't we still be hunters/gatherers?

What do you mean? The premise was that there would be plenty of land to go around for everyone. Unfortunately, we have put ourselves in a position where land has become a scarce resource.

Will a self-improving AI not do all the things you mention?

What I'm saying is that lack of food, lack of health care etc aren't means to get you to conform to a social norm. They are simply a consequence of that you're not providing for yourself.

Unless we were overpopulated, it would still work out. That is, if everyone could go out and find a plot of land to live off.

Better yet, all the people without access to automation could in form an entire economy among themselves. They would live like we do now, or like we have done at some point in history. Even without any support from the more developed society, they could develop like we do now.

> forced to live of the land

Oh, no, living off the land! How could anyone ever do that?!

Whoa, there! You must be deliberately conflating different things. Social norms isn't important here. The reason we work, if you didn't know that, is that it is a way to provide for oneself, i.e. earning money to buy food, a house, clothes, treatments for illness etc.

It's up to you to get those things, or whatever things you crave. It's not like anything you originally owned has been taken away from you if you don't manage to do that.

> objections to democracy

I'm afraid that doesn't say much. Are they striving for more centralized power (a dictator holding the power over everybody) or less centralized power (no one having the right to decide over other people)?

I think it's a piece of software. That's all I know. I don't know if it's something you run on your own computer or distributed on a blockchain or something. I guess it's supposed to be obvious. It's not obvious to me.

> No. You could eat a jar of it and nothing in your genome would change

Um, I don't think that is what anyone is worried about, rather what can be done intentionally with it and to what extent we are still humans after a few generations of heavy use on ourselves.

>It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen.

Hehe, the obvious hole in his education was of course that he couldn't fix his pipes himself. :)

Anyway, would you care to summarize or just briefly mention what point the article argues?

> We use JavaScript and React to create the user interface with the help of Node.js and a long list of NPM modules.

Does this make any difference to the user?

> Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear.

I guess we are all are against some things. For my own part, I don't see that when there is something I feel is wrong, it is always, or even usually, because I am afraid of it. Furthermore, some things (strong AI; synthetic biology), I have become afraid of by understanding some of it.

> Someone who understands how vaccinations work, why we do them, why they're made the way they are can't be afraid of them, and thus won't be against them.

Oh, my. I am all for vaccinations, but the reason is simply that I find the people who claim that vaccinations do not cause autism (or whatever negative consequence) more credible than those who claim that they do. It's not even about my own education, it's about what sources of information I find trustworthy. I couldn't possibly say anything myself about how vaccinations and autism are or are not related.

Yeah, I mean, being strong as an ox would mean both that your abilities are superior to those of others and that you would make for a useful slave.

Does it matter if it's true or not?

> his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves

I'm curious, do you take that to speak well or ill about the ethnic groups in question?